What advise would u give the Post Office seeking to cut its costs and Saturday mail delivery..?

Well, ultimately the post office needs to find out what its break-even point is and perhaps work in some margin for budget forecasting errors and potential losses. From that point on it needs to be very strict in its budgeting and set very tough new limits on those. It may need to consider ways to reduce waste and improve areas of recycling, like using the back of paper that has already been printed on, in other words saving in areas such as stationery. Perhaps it should examine what more successful post offices of a similar size are doing over seas, and use some kind of benchmarking to compare operations, and to improve operations by reducing costs. It may need to downsize staff. Perhaps in more remote areas, mail should be picked up from the post office rather than delivered to every single house. Or deliveries could be cut back in those sorts of areas. Another option could be simply to put another cent on the price of a postage stamp, or may be get rid of slower options of mail which would have been cheaper.

Don't deliver to business districts on Saturday. Maybe in New York there are predominately Jewish zip codes that wouldn't miss the mail on Saturdays either. In Detroit is there a predominantly Muslim neighborhood that could do without Friday delivery? They should cut back to 5 days a week, but tailor the non delivery day to the neighborhood, that way, there will be more efficiency. Also if the deliver days were staggered, postal vehicles could still be used 6 days a week rather than just 5 so they wouldn't have to buy as many which would save $ in the long run too. I do have Netflix so this makes Netflix less valuable to me, also I receive the Economist Magazine and Bloomberg BusinessWeek Magazine, both arrive on Saturday now, will they pump out the issues faster for Friday delivery or will I be waiting until Monday?

I am an ex-SPSO, which means that I used to have a post office. So, firstly, the Post Office, and the Royal Mail, are legally two seperate businesses. The Post Office is Post Office Counters, Royal Mail is mail deliveries, the posties and Parcelforce etc.

The Post Office is a dinosaur when it comes to corporate structure and management. There are literally millions of pounds that could be saved if the Post Office gutted it's internal management structure, and rid out about three levels of management. When I had my post office I had to deal with moving teams, business development teams, the team that dealt with rural post offices, the business strategy team, the closure team, it was endless. And all could only be accessed by phoning up and leaving a message with a centralised helpline. Needless to say, no one ever called back. Simple things like letting the post masters contact these people directly using phone and email would save so much money and effort.

I also believe that the Post Office's business structure isn't right. In my area, my old ladies wanted saving stamps, postal orders and their pension money. My job was to try and sell them broadband (in an exchange that didn't have any!!), Car insurance and growth bonds. It was a pointless exercise. I believe that the PO have simply got too far away trying to keep up with the likes of Tescos, and has forgotten to listen to its customers and actually give them what they want.

With regards to the Royal Mail, this is a far harder issue, because the government are opening up all of the profitable parts of mail delivery to the commercial companies, whilst leaving the Royal Mail with all of the unprofitable stuff. So, essentially, the RM is in a no-win situation here. I think that the only true answer here is to completely open up all commercial profitable operations and let the commercial companies like TNT cream away all the good stuff, and then for the core of RM, the last mile delivery and the far flung outreaches that no commerical company will deliver to without a hefty premium, should be left as a purely subsidised core nationalised business.

Problem here is that the RM can't get to this because of the pension issue. So it would need the government to hold up their hands and relieve the RM of all of the historic pension liabilities. I think that's unlikely to happen.

Other cost cutting is just going to be unpopular with the customers. if this same question was posted on a business forum you would be so unlikely to hear the "just deliver once a week" answers because businesses are already feeling disadvantaged by not getting their mail until after lunch.

I think that the RM will end up charging businesses for a daily mail delivery service, with deliveries in the morning. This is already in place, but voluntary. I think it's probable that this will be expanded as the delivery times get later.

Yes I have some great advice for the Post Office.

Please eliminate mail delivery on Tuesday and Thursday too. I can still live with pizza flyers/junk advertising and bills for only three days a week.

I've never understood why the post office has to deliver on Saturday.

If it's that urgent use a private company - at $8 a pop. Or stop complaining about the Post Office being "BROKE" when it was bankrupted on purpose by politicians.

I would not only end Saturday deliveries,I would restrict them to Monday,Wednesday and Friday.I would also lower the starting salary and increase fees for P.O. boxes.I might even consider outsourcing some of the non-essential jobs and establish a hiring freeze.Drastic times call for drastic actions.Half measures are not going to solve the postal service's financial woes.

Provide an option for "once weekly" delivery.

Daily delivery of postal mail is becoming more irrelevant with the internet.

They shouldn't work on the Sabbath day anyway...

What is the purpose of using "express" mail if our mail

reach to its destination within 3 days anyway.

They shouldn't cut costs..

Like everything they do raise the price of stamps. or they may complain that there still running short of money don't think it would help no matter what they do.